Saudi Arabia National Team Declines to Honour Minute’s Silence for London Attack

The Australian Football Federation (FFA) said Saudi Arabia declined to participate in a minute’s silence to honour the victims of last weekend’s London attack before their World Cup qualifier on Thursday.

The 11 Australia players on the pitch lined up at the centre circle with arms on their teammates’ shoulders when the stadium announcer called for a minute’s silence to reflect on Saturday’s attack, in which two Australians were among the eight people killed.

Their opponents, however, stayed away from each other, leaving questions to whether the Saudis were aware of the plan or were purposely ignoring the gesture.

FFA, however, claimed after the match that the Saudis both knew about and agreed to the plan but declined to participate.

According to ESPN, neither the AFC nor the Saudi federation released a statement in response,

Australia ended up winning the match 3-2, leaving them and Saudi Arabia level at 16 points in their qualifying group. Japan also have 16 points but have a game in hand.

The earlier the white go and apologies and end their quest to be supreme to other race…they go dey suffer…why a minute silence for London…what of the onces dat haPpened in Nigeria….the white have being working for their lands to be peaceful while they go destroy people land…they will suffer for all the war they started for greed

Please educated yourself, while most Saudis are muslims, all Muslims are not Saudis. Saudis are not Syrian. Were as the Saudis might not like the hypocrisy on what lives the world grieves for, their action was immature and sent the wrong message.

I think the Saudi team didn’t respect the one minute silence because it was hypocritical in the sense that why only recognise the London attack? Why not the attack that happened in Kabul that killed over 98 a few weeks ago, the attack in Manilla a few days ago, the attack in Iran and other attacks in other countries that are not from the West???? It is really hypocritical because the actions of the news stations, magazines, social media etc show that western lives matters and not the lives from other countries! You don’t see Facebook or CNN or BBC putting up a slogan of #westandwithkabul or other non-western countries going through terrorist attack even daily…That is my take and i don’t think it has anything to do with religion but the double standards.

Hmmmm very good point but when they were informed about this that would have been the time when they would bring up this issue of double standards instead of agreeing to observe the minute of silence and then refusing to on the field, causing odd speculations. This would have been their time to add something of value to the world!

But none of those attacks killed Australians. You also miss the point that majority of the funding for said attacks likely came from Middle East. It’s sad though, you came to someone’s house and disrespected them. Not surprised though if they can’t even respect their mothers and sisters!

The only problem with the point you’re making is that Australian team requested a minute of silence to honour the two Australians who were murdered last Saturday on London Bridge.

Nobody was taking a minute of silence merely to recognize the London attacks.

Don’t know if you’ve followed the news of those who died at all but out of the 8 killed, only 1 was British. Everyone else was of a different nationality and if a Saudi National had been killed and the country’s team had asked for a minute of silence to honour their murdered comrade before playing, I’m pretty certain they would have gotten plenty of solidarity and support for that from the Aussies.

Let your anger be against the western media (who deserve real criticism for how they spotlight certain atrocities only when it affects certain countries….. but then again, that’s why they’re the western media and the subject itself is a full-page discussion for another day). However, you can’t excuse the attitude of the Saudis here…. if they agreed with what was said behind the scenes and came out to act as nonchalantly as they did, then it is deplorable.